UFC 290 Moreno vs. Pantoja best bet: Expect a new flyweight champion to be crowned
Brandon Moreno and Alexandre Pantoja battle for the flyweight title in UFC 290’s co-main event.
The pre-fight narrative: This is about as good as a penultimate fight can get. Moreno unified the flyweight championship after winning his trilogy bout against Deiveson Figueiredo at UFC 283. Pantoja is 2-0 against Moreno during his career and enters Saturday’s tilt on a three-fight win streak.
UFC oddsas of 2:26 p.m. ET on 07/06/2023.
UFC 290 Moreno vs. Pantoja best bet
Best Bet: Alexandre Pantoja to win (+170)
The Brazilian has won seven of his past nine fights, including each of the last three. He earned performance of the night bonuses for his last two victories over Alex Perez (first-round win via neck crank) and Brandon Royval (second-round win via rear-naked choke).
Pantoja has never been finished in 30 professional bouts (25-5) and we don’t expect that to change on Saturday.
He’s faced Moreno twice and won each time. He did so first in 2016 in The Ultimate Fighter Tournament of Champions via submission and again in 2018 at UFC Fight Night via decision.
To be fair to Moreno, those fights were well before he developed into the champion he is today — but a 2-0 record is a 2-0 record.
These are two evenly matched competitors who can secure a victory through striking or grappling, though we believe Pantoja holds a clear striking advantage:
When Pantoja won back in 2018 he landed 70 significant strikes to Moreno’s 45 and 71% of those connected with the Mexican’s head, per UFCStats.com. Two of the judges scored that fight 30-26 in Pantoja’s favour.
Moreno’s method to victory will be bringing Pantoja to the mat and utilizing his superior stamina to tire out the Brazilian. We don’t see that happening, though.
Pantoja has a solid 67% takedown defence and is a more than capable wrestler in his own right.
Key stat: Pantoja stuffed five of Moreno’s seven takedown attempts in 2018 and had 1:12 of ground control to Moreno’s 0:16.
